We all know that as non-monogamous perverts, we’re completely above jealousy. It’s 100% full-time compersion up in here! Except we’re not, and it’s not. Jealousy affects all our relationships for so many different reasons. Different people and situations trigger jealousy bombs in sometimes unexpected ways.

@wetcoastkat and @seriousFLICK discuss jealousy in many of its iterations, what it means, what it doesn’t mean, why some people cause you to Hulk out while others might inspire giddy compersion rainbows and why rules don’t always work in the shadow of their coming out and their trip to Desire. They also discuss what they have done to decrease the harm jealousy can do in their open relationship.

I had this insane conversation with a dude, just earlier today, someone who was complaining that women get to do men don’t do. “It’s just like reverse racism!” “See? Women have it better.” And the thing is… I get it. I get where that might come from, sometimes things seem unfair, especially to men, men who have been taught they need to earn a woman’s affection meaning, if they just show enough devotion, put in enough effort, and demonstrate they can provide, and any woman out there worth anything should want to be with them.

Men have been taught to worship women and to work themselves to the bone for someone so they don’t have to.

I get it.

We’ve been setup to sacrifice ourselves for someone else, someone else who wants us to sacrifice for them and who will show us their eternal appreciation by opening their hearts, their minds and yes… their legs.

Get. It.

But that’s the thing, we’ve been setup, by the men and women in our lives, by our parents, by our cultures, by the people we’ve cared about our entire lives because they didn’t know any better. We’ve been set-up to feel like if someone doesn’t want that they’re ungrateful.

It’s insidious, and it does us nothing but harm and it sets us up to get left at the doorstep when we walk someone home or get left without a drinking partner when we buy someone a few drinks or don’t get a thank you when we hold a door open or when we don’t get brought home when we buy someone dinner, because we –expect something- based on what we put out.

We’ve been set up.

Thing is, women have been setup too, we’ve all been setup, and the more people figure it out, the more the people who haven’t figured it out get angry because we’re not getting what we’re supposed to, because the world has changed and women faster than men are changing meaning we’re getting left behind.

But it doesn’t have to be like that.

If you’re listening to this and connecting to any of the frustrations I laid out above then know there’s a better way. Many women don’t need or want us to lay down our lives for them, they don’t want to be put on a pedestal and worshipped, they don’t want to be provided for… they just want to be people, and move with people that understand no one owes anyone anything… and that means us. If we want to be with someone, be with women, and be listened to, friends with, cared for, and loved by women, it needs to be a meeting of equals and a mutual meeting of minds, meeting of hearts, and yes… a mutual meeting of bodies.

And if you don’t get that, know this.

Women don’t give a fuck what you think or what you want, because they don’t have to, because giving a fuck… That… is something you have to earn.

Check out these articles by Rafaella Gunz about her experiences seeking support in STI communities and… being hit with men feeling like she’s open for business, and being hit with men and women hitting her with “it’s just benign, it’s just harassment, deal with it”.

Take a few minutes to read, even if you decide not to agree with all of us, understand where she’s coming from and where women come from every day.

Thanks for letting me rant a little, and to honor the fact that this will be my very last rant of 2015 I’ll close out by telling you that all of this was recorded at The Gentleperverts’ Social club, population, all of us. You can find more Gentleperverts’ Social Club podcasts every month at www.gentleperverts.com and discuss our latest episodes and topics on twitter with @GentlePerverts and me @DylanTheThomas. You can find me, Dylan Thomas, on Facebook, Spotify and Fetlife as DylanTheThomas. If you have a submission, a story, a signal boost request, or an idea for a topic send that over to me at dylan@lifeontheswingset.com. If you like having me record live and on location, throw me a buck or two at tip.gentleperverts.com.

Perverts! Stand at attention and lend me your ears, for tonight… we once again dive into language, we dive into our common vocabulary because sometimes we throw words around without regard to their roots and their original meaning. Words are understood and misunderstood, used and misused, and in the process words lose meaning. Words that lose their meaning can still useful. We can discuss, reexamine, and reclaim the words we’ve lost and in this spirit today, with Crista Anne and with Erin Kennedy, we spend our time discussing…

Trigger warnings.

We also touch on helicopter parenting generating “adults” who expect the world to adjust to them, and how shielding children from the reality that trauma exists in the world renders them unprepared to deal with the real world and we talk about storytelling and touch on Orange is the new Black and Jessica Jones

Choice Quotes:

Crista Anne:

For people who are thrown into flashbacks or full blown panic attacks (don’t know who you are, lose touch with reality, lose touch with time), they are just absolutely invaluable, to me, and as they have become more popular over time I have found navigating the internet to be so much easier.

Erin Kennedy:

There’s an inherent privilege as to what gets trigger warnings.

…I think it’s a balance between protecting people and protecting ourselves and making sure that we have the stuff that empathy is created out of…. Balancing between keeping yourself safe emotionally and also doing the work of empathy, however painful that is, is a tough balance to create.

Hey gang! It looks like we're getting back to a regular schedule maybe? We're aiming for every two weeks on Fridays and are starting our return with an interview we recorded many months ago at CatalystCon in Virginia in March of 2015.

This episode features an interview and story with Dylan Thomas, who just so happens to be our Swingset.FM buddy / pal / tech guy / helper dude, and we apologize to him for holding onto it for so long! We also blah blah blah for a long while about our latest projects, health stuff, and maybe not so good life things, because we like to mix in the good with the ... well, realistic? Anyway, back to our guest!

Dylan Thomas is a sex-positive non-monogamous proselytizer from the suburban wastelands of Chicago. Dylan believes that there’s a larger non-normative sexuality community that all wants the same things; the freedom to be who they are, love who they want, and the choice to keep their sexual preferences as private or as public as they choose. Dylan sees the need for a more open discussion about why we, no matter where we exist on the identity, sexuality, or lifestyle spectrum, all have much more in common than we realize and that we’re all natural allies of each other.

Sex Ed A Go-Go made its very first appearance at Jeff Mach’s Geeky Kink Event Classic on November 6th. Lola and the Double P managed to make the kinksters blush with a little help from a well-placed Njoy Eleven.

Lola and the crew chat about prostate fun (Ass tug of war anyone?), the virtues of all things Njoy, weird places they’ve fucked, getting their genitals high on Foria, dental damn cock ghosts, having the kind of sex that sends you to the hospital, and dick showers, burlesque name or sex act or both? You’ll have to listen to find out!!

In this special episode we sit down to talk about the recent abuse allegations against (retired?) porn star, James Deen. We share our personal reactions to the news and discuss how it has been handled both in mainstream and social media. We talk about what happens when we label someone a feminist because we want them to fit our own fantasy's narrative and how we can take that power back. We also talk about the porn industry and how challenging things can be for sex workers who find themselves in abusive situations.

Outside of speaking up for sex workers and women who so often are not believed when they go public with their stories of rape and sexual assault, we're not trying to solve anything with this discussion. We did, however, feel the need to have it and will continue to interrupt our standard format occasionally whenever important news items like this occur.

Hello and many Greetings to all you perverts, I’m recording live from Desire Resort & Spa in Cancun, Mexico! Earlier today I sat down with upwards of thirty, and likely many less than two hundred perverts for a discussion about spaces. What makes a space special? What helps make people feel safe? What makes a space a focal point for a community?

As we moved through a “how do we find other perverts” discussion, we stumbled on the question of what it means to stay closeted and to come out these days, drawing parallels and differences between the nonmonogamous and queer communities, and examining how it’s possible to win the hearts and minds of others when engaging them “behind enemy lines”.

Usually I’d have a little more to say, but I’m all talked out… and kissed out, and blissed out… I mean, really, if you’ve never made out with a tequila flavored shotglass…. You should give it a try.

But before you search for a shotglass with a flared base, this has been… quite literally, been a recording taken at the Gentleperverts’ Social Club, on location, in Mexico. You can find more Gentleperverts’ Social Club podcasts every month at www.gentleperverts.com and discuss our latest episodes and topics on twitter with @GentlePerverts and me @DylanTheThomas. You can find me, Dylan Thomas, on Facebook, Spotify and Fetlife as DylanTheThomas. If you have a submission, a story, a signal boost request, or an idea for a topic send that over to me at dylan@lifeontheswingset.com. If you like having me record live, on location, throw me a buck or two at tip.gentleperverts.com.